Update: Salaries for Fisher's FSU staff will increase by 17 percent

Jan. 2, 2014

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Democrat sports editor

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF. — Three days after getting head football coach Jimbo Fisher’s signature on a contract extension, Florida State athletic director Stan Wilcox said the “next step” is making sure that Fisher’s assistant coaches are taken care of.

As part of the university’s contract negotiations with Fisher, Wilcox said FSU already has built in an overall salary increase for the Seminoles’ nine assistant coaches. It will then be up to Fisher to decide which assistants receive raises and how much.

Wilcox said the overall increase will be 17 percent.

FSU’s highest-paid assistant right now is defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt at $500,000, and offensive line coach Rick Trickett is next at $455,000. The Seminoles’ nine assistants make a combined $2.86 million each year under their current contracts, so that pool will increase by about $486,000 to nearly $3.35 million.

“Within Jimbo’s contract, we built in a certain percentage increase for assistant coaches that he will basically be able to determine,” Wilcox told the Democrat on Thursday. “And then, generally, we might still have one or two assistant coaches who will get offers elsewhere, and then you may have to go back and look at, ‘Did we have enough in the pool to make sure that we keep that coach?’

“And if we don’t, we’ll need to go back and look at what we need to do to make sure that coach is happy and stays.”

When Fisher was retooling his staff last offseason, the Seminoles were able to essentially get discount rates on quarterbacks coach Randy Sanders ($225,000) and defensive ends coach Sal Sunseri ($200,000), because they were being paid by former schools; Sanders by Kentucky and Sunseri by Tennessee.

FSU’s football team is 13-0, ranked No. 1 in the country and will face Auburn on Monday for the BCS national championship.

After such a successful season, Wilcox said the Seminoles have every hope of keeping the entire coaching staff intact. But just as Fisher’s name has emerged in some coaching searches, Wilcox said the assistants likely will receive interest as well.

“Just like any assistant coach in any other sport, the one thing you hope is that if you’re going to lose any coaches it’s because they’re going on to be a head coach at another school,” Wilcox said. “And you’d want to help them do that because, generally, most of their goals are to do that. But any time you have a successful program, you’ll obviously have schools that will go after your assistant coaches to help their programs.